Hello fellow relationship revolutionaries

My name is Ashley Berry and I am an embodied relationship coach, professional dominatrix, conscious kink educator and mentor, facilitator, DJ, event producer, nature-lover, dog-owner, dance & movement enthusiast, and the co-founder of Wholistic Kink LLC and Revel Culture (community events and content for relationship revelutionaries - website coming soon!)

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In addition to deep study and education, I pull a lot from personal experience in my coaching work, so I want to share a little bit more about my story and background.

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Relationships were the biggest pain point in my life until I was in my early 30's. I longed for more intimacy but felt confused, scared, and incapable of creating and sustaining the kinds of relationships I desired (specifically in the romantic and sexual realms, but also in some ways platonically and familially).

 

I grew up in a home with divorced parents, addiction and codependence, and few models of thriving relationship, healthy boundaries, and emotionally intelligent, attuned communication.

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I grew up having a close network of friends, but also dealt with bullying and cruelty from inside my friend groups (wild animals we humans are! Especially without adequate guidance or cultural focus on healthy relating). The first deep love relationship I had ended in a heartbreak that crystallized my experience of low self-esteem, and catalyzed a self-sabotage spiral.

 

The many, many instances of betrayal, dismissal, emotional attacks, and boundaries violations (physical, emotional and energetic) left me with a deep fear and distrust of other people.

 

As a result, I spent most of my late teens and twenties spinning my wheels while cycling through short-term relationships and marginally satisfying sex, and self-medicating for loneliness. I had close relationships but didn't know how to lean into them and let myself rely on those who loved me. Attachment was terrifying. Or at least, that's what my early experiences had wired into me. 

 

So much of what happened relationally in my formative years was based on lack of skills, capacity, and adequate societal structures of support, rather than a lack of love on the part of my family and friends. And I believe this is the case for most of us. Love abounds, but the skills, strategies, and cultivated capacity to let it in and tend it... well, those are hard skills that take practice.

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While the primary focus of my adult career was learning about being human through the study of the body, psyche, and spirit, it wasn't until my late 20's that I recognized the throughline: relationship. Even the careers and studies I engaged that seemed unrelated were opportunities that I leveraged to find gems of learning about relationship that I later applied in relationship.

 

A prime example: spending a year in an immerisve herbalism apprenticeship taught me to be in relationship with plants in a way that gave me a deeper sense of belonging in the world, through experiencing the connection available in the more-than-human world. This reminds me that I don't have to rely solely on the human world to nourish me. It reminds me to retreat to nature if I need to regulate my nervous system to be more resourced for human interactions. Herbalism study taught me valuable principles of interconnectedness, paying exquisite attention, and how to cultivate the kind of subtle communication and deep listening that the natural world invites, and that the human world appreciates and thrives on as well.

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I looked back at every way I had spent my time, and my takeaway every time, was some skill, awareness, or personal integration that could benefit my relationships if i chose to apply it there.

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I had devoted my life to the study of relationships, and how to cultivate wholeness within ourselves so that we can bring more of ourselves, more consciously, into our relationships. Once I became aware of this and engaged my relationships with the lens that they are a place to learn, heal, play, express, and evolve, my relationships began to get a lot more fun. When I was having more fun, being more curious, my relationships really started to thrive.

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I've spent the last two decades tending the inner work necessary to feel safe and worthy of love. Ten years ago, I started to feel safe to get honest enough in my relationships that they could finally become the collaborative vehicle for co-evolution and life satisfaction that I'd always longed for.

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I got honest about the fact that I am kinky, non-monogamous, and a queer heteroromantic. I got honest about how my neurodivergence affects my relationships. I got honest about the fact that I was working through disorganized attachment and cultivating secure attachment. I got honest about my needs, desires, boundaries, fears, fantasies, gifts, limitations and perhaps most vulnerably, about all the things that I don't know or am still learning about what I want and what I have the capacity to offer. 

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I'm stoked to say that these days I mostly experience secure attachment within a vast network of deeply bonded and supportive romantic, familial, platonic, sexual, and creatively collaborative long-term relationships. The honest conversations are increasingly easeful and very often infused with humor, creativity, and safe, collaborative relational exploration. And, it's a work in progress.

 

Cheat sheet: it always will be. Which is one of the main reasons that my approach is focused on the most enjoyable ways to let ourselves be polished in relationship: because it's a core aspect of our experience, as long as we're human. 

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Some modalities and lenses I frequently use, because they are both effective and fun:

- Somatic awareness and embodiment practices

- Organic Intelligence - a pleasure-oriented way of moving beyond trauma based in mindfulness and neural reprogramming

- Conscious Kink (kink is all about playing with what is, expanding ideas of eros, upleveling communication, and consciously exploring power dynamics and other shadow aspects inherent to human relating)

- Consensual non-monogamy inspired practices for heart expansion and emotional mastery (principles can be applied to monogamous relationships as well)

- Archetypal work, character work and role playing

- Light-hearted shadow work (may incorporate dreamwork, writing, art, movement, ritual, parts work, meditation, visualization, and soul-centered spiritual perspectives, as means of exploring the unconscious)

- Embodied consent and connection games

- Belief systems work

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Training and experience:

• BA in Psychology

• Currently enrolled: Organic Intelligence Coaching Certification

• Somatic Integrative Trauma Training through The Embody Lab

• Integrative Somatic Parts Work Training with Fran D. Booth, through The Embody Lab

• Currently Enrolled: Somatic Attachment Therapy through The Embody Lab

• 200 hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training with Nirvana Yoga

• 200 hour Thai Massage Certified with the Thai Massage Circus

• Pro-Domme since 2018: Various forms of technical, psychological, and ethical BDSM training

• Certification in Eco-Ministry through Seminary of the Wild

• 6 month Lightworker Incubator with Inner Sun Alchemy

• 20 hour Non-Violent Communication Training

• 20 hour Family Constellations training with Leslie Nipps

• 20 hour Craniosacral therapy training with Julie Franklin

• Way of Council Level 2 Certified facilitator with The Ojai Foundation

• 200 hour Herbalism Apprenticeship with Blazing Star Herbal School

• 100 hour Authentic Movement Training with Contemplative Dance

• Ritual Design Certification with Victoria Markham

• Experience and study with The Animas Institute

• 10+ years of Contact Improvisation training and practice, including exploring relationship through movement

• Ancestral Healing Training with Dr. Daniel Foor

• Disrupting Our Whiteness Training with Holistic Resistance

• 20 years of various study in somatic, intuitive, and mindfulness modalities, and plant medicine work.